A hierarchy of auditory processing developed by Derek Sanders for use in developing sequential objectives for musical listening skills serves as the basis for this article. Because of the similarities between components of speech and music, the hierarchy is congruent with musical listening expectations. While this model was designed for the development of speech discrimination, it has important implications for music education. The hierarchy consists of a 10 level sequence for processing auditory stimuli. The steps consist of: (1) awareness of the stimuli; (2) localization; (3) attention; (4) discrimination between speech and nonspeech sound; (5) auditory discrimination; (6) suprasegmental discrimination; (7) segmental discrimination; (8) auditory memory; (9) auditory sequential memory; and (10) auditory synthesis. Use of this hierarchy for advancing listening experiences for hearing impaired children could be used to maximize the residual hearing on musical listening. A brief look at each of these levels and the suggested correlation between the hierarchy and music is included. While deaf children may require more attention from the music teacher, and materials may have to be adapted in their presentation, musical perception is a possibility. With a little imagination and the adaptation of materials used in the musical education of hearing children, activities for the deaf can be designed to enhance the development of the perceptive skills in the described hierarchy. To build an effective music program for the deaf, it is necessary to create a foundation of musical perception in the early years of the child's music education. Contains 15 references and an appendix of resources for musical examples. (DK)